Bread Bible - Ginger Scones

Late last year, with the maelstrom that is Christmas, the end of the work year* and the beginning of summer holidays, I missed a few of the monthly Bread Bible projects. I've caught up with some of them - including my current favourite, the Basic Hearth Bread. Next on my list is the November 2016 project of Creamy Ginger Scones. 

I made these a while ago now but with the demise of the weekly discipline of the Baking Bible bake-through, my blogging mojo (always pretty tardy) has almost completely faded away. I have two other Bread Bible posts lined up to finish, hopefully I can whip up a bit of enthusiasm and get them out before I forget all the details.

These scones are really delicious. I mean really delicious. I urge you to make them. Unless you don't like ginger, in which case, don't. I'm going to make them next time I visit my parents because my mother would absolutely love them. She's always been a devotee of those old fashioned Chinese vase-like containers of glace ginger. Something I wasn't keen on as a child but now appreciate.

As I remember these were easy to make. I used glace ginger in the scones instead of the recommended crystallised ginger. This is only because I read the back of the two packets (i.e. glace and crystallised), while standing at the supermarket shelf, and the glace one had a 'perfect for baking' label on it, and a recipe for scones on the back (not as good as this recipe). So glace it was.

I was waaaay too lazy to whip the cream before I mixed it into the dough. This is meant to make the scones airy-er. And it might do. I'll never know.

I'm thinking that next time I might try then with milk rather than cream because for me they were overly rich. However, providing yet another reminder that it's all in the beholding, my colleagues thought otherwise. One of them asked for the recipe and another told me he 'really liked the stodginess' (thanks Che).

I also loved these scones because it gave me an excuse to show off my new Christmas-present-teapot (thanks J & M).

*Or that's how I like to think of it even though, disappointingly and in actual fact, work keeps rolling on.

Next up I'll be posting about Jewish rye bread and olive bread.

The Bread Bible - Irish Soda Bread

My only experience of Irish Soda Bread was many years ago during my mother's 'ye olde English baking' phase (inspired by Jane Grigson's English Cookery as I remember). During this time my brothers and I enjoyed homemade muffins, crumpets, suet pudding, lardy cake and other olde gems, including the Irish soda bread. I remember the soda bread being pretty stodgy and possibly a bit dry (sorry Mum). 

This recipe for Irish Soda Bread from the Bread Bible bears little resemblance to the bread I remember. Rose has added sultanas and a small amount of sugar that make this bread more like a large dense scone. I love a dense carbohydrate, and if it's threaded with sultans and slathered with some butter, even more so. This was very easy to make and nice to eat. 

I didn't soak the sultanas in whisky since I didn't have any, plus I quite like my 'dead flies' a bit chewy rather than soft. I also undercooked it a smidgen and forgot to slash the top of the loaf before I put it in the oven but I was pretty happy with the result anyway.

I still have a few breads to make to catch up with the Bread Bible Bakers' schedule. Next up is the Basic Hearth Bread.

Flaky Scones

If you're going to test out a new (-to-you) recipe, you probably shouldn't do it when you're tired and 'just trying to get it DONE'. On the other hand if you wait to bake them at a good time it might never happen. This was the circumstance in which I made the Flaky Scones from the Bread Bible.

And the short version of the story is that they weren't that successful. Being too slapdash meant that I rolled them out too thinly and generally handled them way too much to maintain the flakiness the recipe is intended to produce.

The resulting scones weren't that bad but they weren't that good either. My pride wouldn't let me take them to work which was a problem because the recipe makes a very large amount. Actually I found it much harder to handle this volume of dough gently. So I consigned them to the freezer.

These scones are richer and sweeter than classic English-style scones. They were certainly very tasty (and I've now eaten quite a few). They're not the kind of scones that need any condiments added. I think they're best served straight out of the oven. They'd make a nice comforting afternoon treat to serve to friends on a cold day with a cup of tea.

If I'd taken more care at this point, things could have been different. For someone who tends to have a heavy hand and gets carried away with the rolling pin, it might have been better to skip the multiple business letter folds and just press out the dough while it still had flakes of butter.

In July the Rose's Bread Bible Bakers are making Caramel Sticky Buns. Yum!

Irish Cream Scones, no lace

My name is Catherine and I am a Scone Bore. 

I have come to realise that, when it comes to the subject of scones, I find it almost impossible not to bore on about how I prefer scones to be. So, to try and spare you the worst I will just say that:

1. these are delicious and ultra-easy to make scones

2. sweet scones don't need raspberry butterscotch lace topping even if it is truly delicious

3. I might make the 'lace topping' to serve with plain (no sugar) scones and cream.

And that's all I'm going to say on the subject.

Well not completely all. There's the making of the scones to talk about.

These scones use all cream instead of butter so there's no rubbing the butter in. I threw it all into the bowl and mixed it with my trusty bone-handled knife which reminds me of my grandmother. It wasn't a very wet dough but came together nicely. 

I love raw scone dough. It's a shame to cook it really. 

Rose includes a tricky step where you press the dough into a round cake tin. This makes a perfect circle you can cut into triangles. It is a good idea but I just pressed my dough into a rough-ish circle.

As I mentioned, the recipe gives you the option of making a raspberry butterscotch lace topping for the scones. I feel the title may mislead the unwary baker. I had a picture in my mind of a scone with a lacy pattern of raspberry cooked into it. It turns out it's actually a (delicious sounding) sauce to drizzle on the finished scones. Maybe lace means drizzle in American English? Or maybe I have an overactive imagination? 

I thought about making the sauce (it would be lovely on ice-cream) but the whole attraction of scones for me is the maximum 20 minutes from getting out the bowl to putting scones on the baking rack. That and the raw dough.

Next week we're making Pizza Rustica. Yay!